Michael Di Venuto calls on Surrey to show same intensity and consistency as in 2018 title run-in

The current County Championship Division One holders have disappointed in all three formats this summer but their head coach willed his side on for a strong end to the season

Surrey head coach Michael Di Venuto has given his players a clear instruction for the final weeks of the season - he wants last summer's county champions to finish the campaign with the same intensity and consistency of performance which swept them to the 2018 title.

Di Venuto admits that this summer has been a strange and frustrating one – and not only because the club has been continually bedevilled by injuries and unavailability issues since the start of hostilities in April.

"We have been consistently inconsistent," said Di Venuto, as he summed up the first five months of the season.

"We have been average in our four-day cricket so far and disappointing in the Vitality Blast, and in our final championship matches we simply have to turn up and play much better as a team."

Surrey have three more Specsavers County Championship fixtures left to play, starting next Tuesday (September 10) when they travel to Southampton to take on Hampshire at the Ageas Bowl

The following week they play Essex at Chelmsford and then finish the season with a home match against Nottinghamshire at the Kia Oval, starting on Monday September 23.

"We will be looking to play much better championship cricket in these last three games because things have certainly not gone to plan this season," added Di Venuto.

^{Surrey have struggled in all three formats this year, including in the Blast when they finished second bottom in the group}

"We just have not played good enough cricket in all areas, so there is a good opportunity now for players to show what they can do in these final weeks."

Surrey lie in sixth place in the Division One table, with two wins and four defeats from their 11 matches played, but crucially a whopping 66 points clear of bottom club Nottinghamshire, who are overwhelming favourites to be the only side relegated this summer before the restructuring of the championship into a 10-county elite in 2020 and an eight-team Division Two.

The impact of constant injury absences, and England representative calls, across the summer is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that no fewer than 21 players have appeared in Surrey's 11 championship fixtures to date.

Eight of those players have three or less games to their names and only two, fast bowler Morne Morkel and all-rounder Rikki Clarke, have managed all 11.

Di Venuto's words about inconsistency, moreover, apply particularly to Surrey's collective displays with the bat.

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Only Ollie Pope, with 294 runs from three innings – including the unbeaten 221 he scored against Hampshire at the Oval in last month's only Championship round – and Aaron Finch, with 90 from his sole four-day innings, average above 40.

The veteran Clarke, who turns 38 at the end of September, has been one of the few Surrey players to have performed at a consistently high level in the championship, with 35 wickets at an average of 24.60 and 555 runs at 34.68.

Only Morkel, with 38, has more wickets – although evergreen off spinner Gareth Batty's 26 from eight matches is a worthy effort – while only Mark Stoneman, with 598 from 10 games, and Rory Burns, with 603 from eight appearances, have scored more runs than Clarke.

As Di Venuto admits, it is time for the 2018 champions to finish 2019 on an upbeat note and, at the same time, lay down a marker for the 2020 title contest.

Courtesy of the ECB Reporters Network